Daughters of Mercury Kickstarter

 

Daughters of Mercury

I'm running a Kickstarter until October 26 asking for your support painting a series of full-length oil portraits of trans women, that transcend their conventional depictions in art and media. Rewards include wall calendars, prints, and original paintings. Click above to view a preview or support after Sunday, September 21. If we don't reach the goal, I can't pay the models, cover travel costs, or pay for my time and materials, so I won't make art. If you can't spare, share. Thank you!

EXQUISITE POOP : Blind Reproduction

Today is the last day to support Blind Reproduction's Indiegogo campaign. We have catalogs, prints, art, and special commissions for sale.
Blind Reproduction is a project between 26 artists and writers, in which artists try to remake each others' work based only on a verbal description. View all of the results here.
Next Saturday our show, Exquisite Poop, opens.

EXQUISITE POOP : Blind Reproduction
March 10 – April 15, 2012
Opening Reception Saturday, March 10, 6-9pm
LIVE PERFORMANCE BY ABACUS JONES 8PM

A Gathering of the Tribes
285 East 3rd St. 2nd Floor (Between Ave C & D, near F at 2nd Ave or Delancey/Essex)
New York, NY 10009 (212) 674-3778 info@tribes.org / gatheringofthetribes@gmail.com

Inspired by the different descriptions Steve Cannon’s visitors would give of the art on the walls, and by taking the blind professor to art openings, curator Janet Bruesselbach organized an elaborate art and writing project between 13 artists and writers. It aims to consider the subjectivity of attentive visuality in art writing and the absurdity of symbolic imagery.

The artists were invited to contribute a small two-dimensional work, and commit to another. Images, titles, size and media information were then assigned to the writers, who were charged with describing the art as thoroughly and sincerely as possible. These descriptions were nearly randomly assigned to the contributing artists, who were tasked with recreating the artwork they thought the writer had described, without knowing the artist or seeing the original image.

The first stage of translation from visual to verbal varies hugely in style and focus, even given stylistic restrictions. The artist’s job is even harder and even more subject to the variations of personality and style. Not only was it hard to communicate the most basic aspects of artwork or even the rules of the game, the variations in series are indescribable. The resulting illustration of mis/communication varies from wondrous to farcical and demonstrates the impossibility of translation.

Participating artists:
Alexis Duque
Lorra Jackson
Brian Elig
Blair Kamage
Carly Bodnar
Robert Scott
Joseph Materkowski
Samuel Bjorgum
Lauren Kolesinskas
Jessica Daly
David Hollenbach
BMIP (Babyhead)
Nick Musaelian

Participating Writers:
Allison Moore
Maddie Drake
Joshua Crowley
Jenny Bhatt
Casey Plett
Kaitlin Heller
Adam Kavulic
Zane Hart
Matt Keeley
Jamie T. Clark
Jon Boulier
 Ammon Ford
Chris Heffernan

 Contact the curator: janet@bruesselbach.com

Frieze Art Fair 2011

Frieze is the fourth art fair I've tasked myself with reporting. I'm not sure how extensively I should discuss the parts of it that are the same as all other art fairs. There is some absurdity to traveling to London for it, considering that the majority of the galleries exhibiting there are American. Of course, that means these American galleries know there's enough money in Britain's collecting institutions - including museums, other galleries, and collectors - to invest in making a showing and bringing everything over. And somehow, given both the experience I've already had and the much more serious, if not sober, attitude of Frieze, I'm inclined to be a bit less gonzo about the whole thing. That means I step away from my own experience and actually tell you what this particular white circus says about contemporary art. Unfortunately, because I'm far too rude for the double snobbery of the London art world, I was usually intimidated away from talking to more people or finding out how sales were, or if there were after-hours events, or any satellite shows in time to attend them. c'est la vie.

Hover over the images to get all the information.

Because it's nearly the same people and the same art in very different modes, the most striking social difference can be found between Art Basel Miami and Frieze. Miami is a drug-funded party full of free food and drink and music. Frieze is all business. I suspect the difference in sponsors is a major factor: Frieze's sponsor is mainly Deutsche Bank and several other large German companies. I do rather like the better organization and lack of silliness this gave the show.

Frieze is held, in what may have been an enormous structure to construct for a single weekend, in Regent's Park, in the north near King's Cross station and somewhat mid-city. Once inside, I lost all city orientation. In fact, on the second day I came, I persuaded the VIP desk to escort me through their lounge because I thought that way I would start at the side I hadn't cruised yet. It turned out to still be near the regular entrance, so it was as if the back of the walled tent extended into another dimension.

As with other information-dense environments - like academic texts or postmodern novels or the internet - I focus on finding the most interesting art to me and those I experience these things vicariously for. Though it may be interesting to many, I've developed a blindness toward most abstract art, conceptual shtick, and supposed attempts at the avante-garde that so please critics. I focus on figurative painting because it's what I do, web art and tech responses, cheeky references to art commodification, meta-genre, post-media, non-fetishizing multiculturalism, and things that remind me of people I like. So there I am, up front with my underinformed biases.

London and Frieze presented some clear themes to me. One was that I kept seeing trees in everything - information trees as well as a distincly English manner of painted tree. At the Tate, mostly, I also noticed an odd tendency to organize rooms so that the minority or political issues were always in dead end side rooms. Another Tateism that definitely reflected in Frieze was post-historicism: London's millenium of political continuity encourages a disbelief in modernist style breaks. Art of the past is not only appropriated or responded to by contemporary art, but considered within the same context, with the same tropes.

Because art shows are only curated within the gallery booths, I can't speak for the overall choices of the organizers. As usual, most of the space is rented by blue chip galleries, with a few solo shows in smaller spaces by galleries established in the last 10 years. There are several commissioned Projects. One was the giant hand-changed train station style sign, above, by Bik Van Der Pol. The most notable was Laure Prevoust's series of small white text on black enamel paintings custom made for specific spots throughout the tent. Here's a set of all those I could find. A bit more invisible is Oliver Laric's recording of fair footage to be released as stock video footage - guaranteeing that this fair will come to represent all art fairs.

There were also a few particularly well-curated booths. The most eye-catching was Long March Space out of Beijing. Another was a conceptual installation by Austrian couple Muntean and Rosenblum using other artists' work as well as their own.

Unfortunately, I don't know which of those artists made this, which I would usually skip, as it's all the worst well-used art historical tropes, but it charmed me:

There were these two guys, a good one and a bad one, who were constantly chasing each other, thus maintaining the Good & Bad balance in the world. One day, due to some heavy thoughts in the bad guy's head (about the misleading representation of evil in general and in the movie industry in particular), he slowed down the pace a bit and the good guy stared to catch up to him. "What if I stop entirely and the good guy reaches, even touches me?" The bad guy suddenly got this very unorthodox idea in his head, which, luckily, didn't slow him down more.

"What is he doing?!" The good guy was really stressed by trying to maintain the centuries-old established distance between the two. There will be a happy ending to this extremely dangerous situation, though.

From the very center of this golden circle, through the holes, a fresh idea will come out and will pop simultaneously into the good and the bad guys' heads. And almost immediately after the two of them will take off their white and black skins, the symbols for good and bad, and throw them into that opening, and they will hug each other, and will have a very good fuck (for which they have been waiting since the dawn of civilization) and after a short, unforgettable moment of relaxation, the two will spin out of the golden circle, which, from that moment on will become useless - and that is the really good news.

Interestingly, I am drawn to relatively abstract art when the abstraction derives from Middle Eastern tradition, as in this handwritten plexiglass and pen installation (using repeated quotes from the Cyrus Charter of Human Rights) at Dubai gallery The Third Line. I do get the sense that the strongest collecting force at Frieze is Arab royalty. I also overheard more conversations in German, Dutch, and French than in English. This is the realm of international elites, for whom all these fairs are in different parts of the same worldwide metropolis.

A schoolmate I'm happy to see make it here, and through a Vienna gallery at that. I do wonder whether this sold - it would have been lost in the crowd had I not recognized his work.

Grayson Perry combines several of the themes I saw: the New Aesthetic attraction to information spaces, and uses of historical craft techniques. In this case it almost orientalizes a Western tradition.

The biological mapping trope often aims to distill the appearance but not the goal of communicating, even though the artists that make it are usually close enough to crazy that they do have an untranslatable system.

The combination of impasto in these subtle colors with the scientific illustration style I found very fresh.

With its title, this analog application of digital vision also draws map analogies.

Three of extremely enlarged computer printouts of meta-digital art: one referring to the programs used, at several levels mixed with physical paint, to generate it. The second is an old, much-resaved, originally analog image blown up large enough to make a point of the jpg compression artifacts. Finally, an image made in 3 seconds with a default gradient but likely much more time was spent getting it transferred around and printed.

And net art is printed out and neatly framed in white, which is rather absurd.

In Damien Hirst's art world, the artist's identity, and issues of both uniqueness and ubiquitous surveillance, come into combination with generic artiness, sometimes more cleverly than others.

Somehow I'm more uneasy about including living animals in installations



Than I am about the treatment of your average artist's assistant.

They say bankers talk about art and artists talk about money. Well, Torres makes art out of money, especially very inflated or nearly useless currencies. Here he picks up on the martial themes in a collage of different currencies.

One must always consider our poor, neon sign makers, exposed to the egotistical demands of artists not content to pick a medium they know and stick to it.

Finally, an image of some relevant nearby street art, and a hint at the missed alternatives:

 

Teleportraiture

Teleportraiture is a series of oil portraits painted through videochat. I am a classically-trained portrait artist whose work has always been based around the intimacy generated during the interaction between painter and subject. The painting is artifact of a performance of relationship and conversation, mutual but asymmetrical observation. Unlike paintings from photos, these portraits capture a personality over time. Sometimes things occur like the mirror effect, where I have to put the expression on my face that my subject should have in the painting. Yet the resulting painting is still, choosing challenge over cubist adaptations.

I’ve grown up on the internet, communicating throught text, but in the past few years interacting face-to-face remotely has become commonplace. In videochat, the mirror effect is more explicit, as you’re always able to see yourself as the other sees you. You find yourself having to alter your face from the way people look at computers to how they look at people – yet the portrait artist often looks at people the way people look at computers. This toggling between performing and concentrating means that, more often than not, the absent, concentrating expression of the computer user will be depicted – if I allow it to be.

This project seeks to examine the tenuous, technology, strange intimacy, and charged emotions around communicating remotely, by making the archaic oil portraiture tradition site-unspecific and international in a way that, if anything, makes it more personalized. This differentiates it from the portrait-by-photo services made affordable by outsourcing. The ultimate images use the intermediary camera and compression to generate artifact artifacts. They are not supposed to look like they were done in person, but reflect their particular system of old and new technologies.

I have worked this way on three occasions prior to starting this campaign: once with deep romance, once with a stranger speaking another language, and once for a self-portrait. Teleportraiture in part examines the current trend toward erosion of online anonymity. In the course of the project I hope to see many faces I haven’t seen in person or ever before. Ultimately, my goal is always to make my subject look good, and give them a unique experience with a tangible result – the conceptual aspects will never supercede that. By making your backing part of this project specifically, you get to participate in a techno-social experiment marking a particular cultural moment in an oddly old-school way.

Your money buys you a portrait, images thereof, and videos of sessions, or goes toward a book, poster, and exhibition of the series. The backing structure is based around backers of the smallest amounts being able to sit in and watch the process. At the next level, you’ll get a pdf book and poster of every portrait. Mid-range backers actively contribute by sitting to have their portrait painted, and keep a scan, but I keep the painting. With the permission of the sitter, sessions will be recorded, and a little more money gets you the video. At a relatively low cost for oil portrait commissions, backerss can buy the painting. Even higher donations will keep lower backers from viewing the session, plus no limitations on time or size. I will continue to take commissions for these after the project funded through kickstarter is fulfilled. All backers receive an invitation to a preview reception of the exhibition of these works. The exhibition’s location is undetermined, but should be longer than a month in New York City in mid-2012, somewhere with wifi and computers for remote attendance and so I can keep painting teleportraits from the space.

I'm hoping to make 20-30 paintings over the course of 2 months. Sittings usually take about 3 hours. Most of the paintings I make through Teleportraiture will be between 8x10 inches and 12x16 inches. Usually, I charge $400 or more for a head and shoulders portrait. That means what I really want to raise is $8000. This is, at bare minimum, what your donation goes towards:

Studio rental 800

Electricity 100

Cable 100

Painting Supplies 300

Printing 300

Shipping 400

Frames 200

Exhibition space rental 2000

Exhibition ad/promo 500

Exhibition hardware and labor 300

TOTAL: 5000

With $3000 more, at least, though, I can rent the space for longer, invest in a bigger, better scanner, and provide a computer and projector for the opening. In fact, I'm looking for a good tech-friendly space for this, and if it's non-profit, that would be a huge help, as well.

Here's a 10-minute demo video in which I paint Lauren while discussing the project.

Blind Painting, or, The Canvas Game

Artists, Writers, and Persons of Interest,

This is an invitation to participate in a collaborative project and
exhibition. I've been brainstorming it as "blind painting": what it
resembles is a surrealist game (Ipupukat/ the Paper Game, a little
bit), and, while it's probably been done before, every time it's done
is vastly different depending on the participants.

Artists will contribute one of their works - we'll stick to
2-dimensional, with a maximum largest dimension of 36 inches, to keep
it simple. Writers will be assigned (randomly) one of these works to
describe as extensively as possible, as if it were to be destroyed, or
needed to be forged. Then I will give another participating artist one of these descriptions of
another artist's submitted piece, and they will attempt to replicate the artwork
from that.

There are a lot of interesting things about image and
language being tested experimentally, here. Go with it. Ultimately,
both the original works and the telephone-reproductions will be
displayed in an exhibit, accompanied by the descriptions.
This project will evolve greatly as it goes on. Clearly, I know more
artists than writers, so please pass this on to more writers. If
you're an artist, and know you're good at visual verbiage, you may
save yourself a lot of work by volunteering to be a writer. I may
change it so that it's all artists, especially if we have mostly
artists who write well. Finishing on deadline will be important for
this project, since there are two stages of difficult creative work
before the exhibition materials can even be prepared.

If you're interested in participating as an artist, reply with a jpg
of the work you'd like to include (with media, dimensions, and date),
or say you want to make something specifically for it. If you'd like
to only be a writer, reply with a short sample of observational
writing. If you think you can do both, send both. If pulling those
together is slowing you down from replying to this, then worry about
it later and just reply.

I'm hoping to have an exhibition sometime in early 2012 - March, in
New York. By default, I can hold the show at A Gathering of the
Tribes, blind guy Steve Cannon's alternative space in the East
VIllage, but if you like the idea and can provide a more accessible
space for 4-6 weeks, or somewhere to re-exhibit, I would love that,
and we should discuss it.

I've sent this call to a very diverse crowd at all career stages. The
project's ultimate form will depend on who responds. Please pass it
on, post it, and let those you think would enjoy it know. They should
contact janet@bruesselbach.com (I may set up another address if things
get too intense).
And if you'd like to be involved in planning or funding, I'd love the help.

Hosts

I wanted to generate what the aliens, Ariekei, in Embassytown by China Mieville look like before I looked up the better job other artists have probably done.  It's almost instantly one of my favorite books, everyone.  I don't think I have any better examples of Literary Sci Fi.  I can compare it to Babel-17 or Anathem but better.

Anyway, the Ariekei are described with mixed analogies to earth creatures, enough that you get an idea of something very alien-looking.  Their technology is all biological and they speak a non-representational language with two harmonizing mouths, the "cut" (above, on the neck) and the "turn" (at chest level).  They walk on four "spider"-like legs ending in "hooves", with spines and dark hair.  They have two coral-like "wings", the giftwing (manipulation, from under the turn mouth) and the fanwing (hearing, behind cutmouth and eye antlers).  Wings and eye-antlers all retract or furl and emerge like those of sea creatures or stop-motion plants.  Mature hosts are accompanied by battery creatures (zelles) and older ones grow edible sacs.

SCOPE Art Fair highlights

       Oh, SCOPE. You are a symptom that screams "ENJOY ME!" I hate myself for loving you, because it means that, whether I enjoy their company or not, I, too, am a hipster.
       This was my last fair. I visited on Saturday around 2. As mentioned before, SCOPE took over Pulse's space from last year, a sprawling seaside warehouse block beside the West Side Highway at Houston. To get to the entrance you had to walk by the entire building, which involved passing a half-open loading bay where they'd parked trailer potties next to their resident caterer, Roberta's, a trendy North Brooklyn pizza place that was selling no pizza but lots of booze. I'll also get Roberta's out of the way by saying the restaurant area was decked out like a space disco on several different drugs. The space seems to go on forever and is easy to get lost in, which very much suited the fair. Maybe I just like the space a lot, because I liked the irrational exuberance of Pulse last year.
       SCOPE is the most promo-savvy (I got updates every day on their schedule, and I'm not even sure how I got on their mailing list). Geographically, this one seemed very Brooklyn- and Miami-heavy, with enough Asian to be notable, as well.  They show up at every major art fair cluster, although they never create one. They are the most like a trade fair, the most commercial, the most circus-like, and possibly the most self-conscious about all of the above.  But you know what?  There's more art I like here than anywhere else.  Which is to say, there's a lot, and it's made more provocative in the competition.  By admitting to pretention, they are less pretentious. They're selling to art lovers and collectors, not museums and dealers. It's the middle class, which right now is a bit concerned with its own mortality, and loves to look like the rich and poor, fucking.

Renee Gertier - Space Junk

An image of satellites in earth orbit made by poking holes in paper bags. Okay.

Kris Knight - "Belladona Atropos" and "Blood Flower"

Miami's Spinello Projects had a sprawling area of the front of the warehouse space, without great identification, and sometimes work displayed on tables like this - possibly visiting-collector fallout. Another highlight of theirs was Antonia Wright's "Are You Okay?", video of her crying in crowded public places.

Jorge Santos - Soapbox King

David M Bowers - The Collector

David Bowers! He has often been one of my favorite artists, illustrating fantasy covers with these classicist allegories. He advised me to join a country club if I wanted to sell work.

Ori G. Carino - "Selfexistenlessness" at Dean Projects

Carino counts as my favorite "find", since I'm a sucker for East/West clashes and stuff that looks like porn. Also he titles well. Jenny Bhatt, take note. I like the Dean Project. I hope I deserve to show there someday.  My quibble with this is that the airbrushing makes the figuration weak.

TRUSTOCORP at Contra Projects (a street art/lowbrow gallery based in Detroit)

Lluis Barba

Jennifer Cutrone and Paul Outlaw for Artists Wanted

Yeah, so, this was performance art about decadence and so forth. A bunch of artists being assholes. Every once and a while one was going around with a platter and offering you his sliced sausage at groin level. They probably took turns - I was also handed some grape juice from that golden fountain.

Andrew Ohanesian (image courtesy of the artist), "Mandies" at English Kills (Brooklyn)

Carrying on with the theme of free booze as relational aesthetics, this was my very favorite. There were two doors, looking grimy and clubby and run-down and covered in graffiti, with "please keep the noise to a minimum and respect our neighbors" signs on the front. One door led to behind the bar, one to in front of the bar. There was space for one or two people on either side. There was a keg underneath and a tap. Whoever entered behind the bar ended up in the role of bartender, and whoever entered on the patron side tried to get beer from them, generating these ad hoc arrangements. The doors weren't marked, so you didn't really know what to expect, approaching them, or which side you'd end up on. I'm told they temporarily had a tip jar going, so it was like a job of a couple of minutes. Maybe it's just because I got weak beer out of this, but I thought it was brilliant.

Apparently there was also a "frat party" performance that was supposed to be going on, but nobody was in the zoo-like enclosure, and I didn't want to volunteer. The upper lounge, "Home Away From Home", had a massage station and meditation and comfort foods and free condoms, and an author.

Matthew Oates - "Red in Red"

Station Independent is not a gallery, but a group of curators and consultants that mostly just do SCOPE NY.  Oates's painting caught my eye immediately - he's probing the uncanny world of living dead faces.

Jenny Morgan - "All This Time" at Like the Spice

I hit this near the end and after going to Mandies until the keg ran out, so I don't have a great description besides that I love Jenny Morgan's work.

       Maybe next year I'll try to hit up Volta finally, and a different set of third-tier fairs, and whatever Dalton and Powhida and Rad and such cool kids have set up for institutional critique (this year it was the Failure Desk). You should too. Look for jobs a couple weeks before hand, lots are available. Call yourself press, I'll show you how, and help me out with this, it's revelatory. Thanks for your attention, and see you next year.

Pulse 2011 NYC

      What happened, Pulse? Was I rushed? Hungry? Or were you just small? You were definitely smaller than last year. You were in the Metropolitan Pavilion on 18th, right in the middle of the city, nearly. Last year, you were where Scope is now, which encourages even more qualitative description in the form of contrasts between you and Scope, and only serves to confuse the two more.

Here's a contrast: 20x200 and Jen Bekman projects gave out free swag bags including useful art tools, canned coffee, chips, and way too much breath-freshening (mints, tongue brush) to avoid insult.  A little art fair humor, aimed more at art proles than VIPs.  Scope, my last stop, was all about the free beer, and wine, and condoms.
      It appears that what caught my eye was mostly based on personal affect, here.  Or maybe Pulse really does lean towards more work by women, more focused on craft, and often concerned with technology.  In fact, the frequency of animals and machines I've seen at it everywhere gives it a perpetually cybernetic theme. Galleries from Canada and the West coast make a good showing.  I often wonder how much local galleries debate whether they can just lure collectors in town for the fair directly to them without renting a booth.  I also skipped last year's repeats, of which I saw plenty.

Cindy Wright, "Web of Tears" at Mark Moore gallery

She makes big juicy paintings from closeups. Non-human subjects fare better - "bacon cube" was another highlight, but I like starry rhizomes, even with maudlin titles.

Laura Ball

These were exquisitely detailed, delicate watercolors, primarily of animals made of animals, were just spread out on a table. I suppose there were too many and they wanted to sell as many as possible.

Tim Etchells

Oh. More neon. Can we stop? With the neon? We get it.  Then again, it always does get my attention.

Carla Camino

Ironically, I cannot find a web presence for her.  Maybe I mis-transcribed her name.  She had some less impressive work up amongst this assortment of small drawings, but I dug this one.

Kevin Bourgeouis - "Inventions of Love (Natural Discourse)"

Syncronicity!  Nina at Causey in Williamsburg got back to me super fast after we chatted.  She is clearly a networker to emulate.

I don't think I liked anything in the artist project spaces upstairs ("Impulse").
Still, so:
Pulse: hip but friendly.